Every now and then, rank-and-file writers, bloggers and radio hosts like myself (but by no means limited to myself) are accused of "self-promotion." This is not a charge usually leveled at very famous writers, bloggers and radio hosts, nor at television hosts (who are, almost by definition, famous) - it...

The New York Times this weekend profiled my old boss Rep. David Obey (D-WI) and his efforts to force the Obama administration to change course in Afghanistan. You can -- and should -- read it here.

I worked closely with Obey on a daily basis during the darkest of...

My newspaper column out today is about the concept of "moral hazard" - and how there's a difference between financial moral hazard and political moral hazard, the latter of which is even more pernicious than the former. You can see this most obviously in the renomination of Ben Bernanke...

In the world of traditional media, it's not all that common for movement progressives to get a platform, which is why I wanted to tell everyone the good news: Today, Clear Channel announced the launch of my new radio show on KKZN-AM760 - the statewide progressive radio station here...

The Associated Press is insisting that Americans don't give a shit about President Obama's Afghanistan War escalation. An outlier poll from CNN goes even father, asserting that Americans actually love the idea of intensifying the war. So maybe it's true -- maybe President Obama and Democrats won't face...

NOTE: If you want to add your voice to the grassroots campaign to stop Ben Bernanke's reappointment to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve, go here.

Thanks to a transpartisan effort to stop the reappointment of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, there's a slim - but distinct -...

During the Vietnam War, it became clear that America could not afford to simultaneously wage war on poverty and wage war in Vietnam. We could not have guns and butter at the same time, as Martin Luther King so eloquently noted in his 1967 speech at Riverside Church:

I don't like to try to read the minds of politicians - mostly because with the automatons we have in office today, if you actually could read their minds, my guess is you'd find almost nothing actually going on in there. However, there are ways to ferret out the actual...

I know what you are thinking - you are thinking that the headline of this post is a joke. But it's not. It's not at all. Watch my CNN debate over Afghanistan and health care yesterday morning with former Bush speechwriter David Frum - specifically check out around 4...

Just a few quick questions to ponder after President Obama's speech announcing a massive escalation in Afghanistan:

- What percentage of those kids in the audience will die because of this decision?

- Why do so many pundits and pro-Obama activists continue to focus on how "hard" and "difficult" and...

"Of the billions poured out in bailouts and stimulus, a substantial share has gone to privileged insiders and liberal interest groups -- Wall Street bankers, auto unions, public-sector employees." -- New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, 11/29/09

Last week, I wrote about the various zombie lies surrounding budgetary...

A few weeks back, I wrote a column looking at how the media and political establishment spends an inordinate amount of time pretending to be outraged at the cost of priorities like health care while simultaneously ignoring the ballooning cost of permanent war-making. I was met with a wave...

Well-known fringe freak show Rammesh Ponnuru published a childish screed in 2006 attacking Democrats as "The Party of Death." It was a (deliberately) provocative title -- and we should thank him, because it's a perfect moniker for these troubling times. Only not for Democrats, but for Republicans.

Indeed, in...

I usually refer to The Washington Times as The Paper of Record for People Who Commit Hate Crimes. It is a fringe right-wing rag owned by the Moonie cult, and thus tends to tread in the most disgusting conspiracy theory and bigotry. So when this same Washington Times got...

In my column two weeks ago, I made this very simple point about the reporting surrounding the cost of the health care bill:

Political headlines of late have all been some version of Dow Jones newswire's recent screamer: "CBO Puts Health Bill Cost At $1 Trillion." That's as true...

The term "idiocracy" means a nation run by idiots - and the term idiot is defined as "an utterly foolish or senseless person" and/or a "person of the lowest order in a former classification of mental retardation, having a mental age of less than three years old." There are...

In its typical -- and typically desperate -- attempt to sensationalize everything via fearmongering, most of the Serious Media continues to assess the Ft. Hood tragedy through the prism of international terrorism rather than through the lens of a stretched-to-the-bone military. And so we arrive at a truly telling...

In pitting the 10-year cost of Democrats' health care bill against the 10-year projected cost of the bloated Pentagon budget, my newspaper column last week made a simple comparison rarely ever made in politics today -- a comparison that might provide citizens with much needed context, but a comparison...

Both politically and economically, it's absolutely idiotic for White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to float the idea of massive social spending cuts right now. If the Great Depression taught us anything, it is that slashing spending in the name of deficit reduction is a great way to...

One of the few - and I sincerely stress the word few - concrete legislative successes progressives notched in the Republican Congress under President George W. Bush came on the evening of July 26th, 2002, when they humiliated the House into passing a bill sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro...